"Union" coalition leader Romano Prodi celebrates his bloc's victory in Italy's parliamentary elections on April 11, 2006.
Photo: Valery Melnikov
|
 |
Romano Prodi Avoids Retirement
// Italian Prime Minister Returns to the Political Stage
At the end of last week, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano refused to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who tried to bow out after the Italian parliament rejected his government's line on foreign policy. Since the decision by the president, which narrowly averted a crisis in the Italian government, Mr. Prodi has succeeded in neutralizing the left-wing radical voice within his own camp and has found new allies on the right. Nevertheless, his center-left coalition's foothold in parliament remains tenuous, and new upheavals could be on the horizon. Kommersant correspondent Elena Pushkarskaya has the details from Rome.
Don't Go Away, Come Back
Last Wednesday almost spelt the end for Romano Prodi's cabinet, which has been in office for only slightly over ten months. Mr. Prodi's government is the 61st to govern Italy since the Second World War. Oddly enough, the crisis came during a vote in the Senate on a foreign policy resolution put forth by the government that initially did not seem to bode especially ill for its sponsors.
The government-sponsored resolution received support from 158 senators, an apparently comfortable majority over the 136 senators who voted against the measure. However, the almost-fatal blow for Mr. Prodi's cabinet was struck by the 24 senators who abstained from the vote. According to Italian law, abstentions were counted as votes against, meaning that the votes against the resolution outweighed those in favor, 160 to 158. The resolution needed 160 votes in order to pass.
This discouraging outcome for the government was the result of the confluence of a number of factors. First, two senators-for-life, Giulio Andreotti and Sergio Pininfarina, unexpectedly withdrew their support from the center-left and decided to abstain from the vote. That was followed by the news that one of the cabinet's staunchest supporters, veteran senator and former president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, had fallen ill and would be unable to attend the vote. The final unpleasant surprise for Mr. Prodi was the decision by two senators from the far-left wing of the governing coalition, Franco Turigliatto of the Communist Refoundation Party and Fernando Rossi of the Italian Communist Party, to abstain as well.
The dissent within the coalition's ranks should not have come as a surprise for Mr. Prodi. Many in the coalition's radical left wing have made no secret of their displeasure with two points included in the resolution: continued Italian participation in the UN-backed NATO mission in Afghanistan and the expansion of a US military base in the town of Vicenza. Over the last several weeks, government officials have tried valiantly to convince the wary left that Italy cannot neglect its international duty in Afghanistan without losing face and that declining to allow the Americans to expand their military base would be an unfriendly move that could lead to big foreign policy losses in the country's relationship with the United States. The radicals, however, refused to budge: no to the war, period. Even a last-minute warning from Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema that the government would be forced to resign if it did not receive the Senate's support on the resolution failed to have the desired effect.
Late on Wednesday, after the votes were tallied, Mr. D'Alema left the parliament and hurried to talk to the prime minister. Upon hearing the news, Mr. Prodi headed straight for President Napolitano to tender his resignation.
The 80-year-old president considered Mr. Prodi's request for three days, during which he consulted with several former president and senators-for-life on possible solutions to the crisis. He also discussed the matter with the opposition and its leader, former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who initially called for early elections before agreeing to a transitional government. Supporters of Mr. Prodi weighed in as well, requesting that the president give the current cabinet another chance.
Mr. Napolitano thus had several unappealing options: dissolve the parliament and set a date for new elections; appoint an interim government, which would also mean new elections at some point; or leave everything as it was and shepherd the prime minister through a vote of confidence in both chambers of parliament. Having decided that neither dissolving the parliament nor scheduling new elections could promise the country much-need stability, President Napolitano made what he called the only possible choice: to refuse Mr. Prodi's resignation. He also said that the a vote of confidence for Mr. Prodi's government "should take place as soon as possible." Sources in the cabinet report that the vote of confidence will take place in the Senate next Thursday, March 1, while the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, will vote a day later. The government is expected to win approval from both chambers.
Beat Your Own
The latest test for Mr. Prodi's cabinet reflects the razor-thin margin by which his government's left-center "Union" bloc won last April's parliamentary elections. Since then, the prime minister's position at the head of a diverse nine-party coalition that includes unpredictable communist and left-wing radical elements has been extremely precarious.
Romano Prodi, who is well acquainted with the threat posed by strangers among his own, cannot fail to understand the seriousness of his situation. Twenty years ago, in 1987, he was forced to resign the post of prime minister after Fausto Bertinotti, the current speaker of the House of Deputies and a former leader of the Communist Party, voted against a pension reform sponsored by the government.
This time, the prime minister is determined not to step on that rake a second time, and he is now making use of the opportunity to impose some party discipline. After his visit to the president's residence, Mr. Prodi announced that he would stay on only if all of the parties in the coalition promised to toe the line in the future. As a precaution, he insisted that the leaders of the parties sign a new 12-point outline of the government's priorities. The new program discards several issues that were dear to the coalition's leftists, such as legal recognition for cohabiting unmarried couples, including gays and lesbians, and adds the construction of a rail link from Turin to Lyon, which is opposed by the Greens and left-wing politicians.
Mr. Prodi may also have found an influential ally in Marco Follini, the former leader of the Union of Christian Democrats, which is part of the center-right bloc "House of Freedoms." Mr. Follini paid with his position for his refusal to acknowledge Silvio Berlusconi as the leader of the "House of Freedoms," and he now leads the new centrist "Middle of the Road Italy" movement. On Saturday Senator Follini created a stir by announcing that he will support the center-left bloc. In an interview with the newspaper Corriere della Sera, he said that he hopes "to participate in the creation of a new center-left bloc and to move the center of gravity of the [bloc] closer to the center."
Mr. Follini represents the interests of those in the Italian establishment who consider the country's bipolar political establishment outdated and exhausted. He hopes that his new coalition will include his colleague Pier Fernando Casini, who was an associate of Mr. Berlusconi before the two suffered a falling-out.
Perched Again on a Powder Keg
Though it has so far survived the crisis and is now being given a chance to catch its breath, Mr. Prodi's government enjoys no guarantee against future upheavals. The issue is not only that the new 12-point "unity pact" that Mr. Prodi made his coalition partners sign could be broken at any moment. The intractable problem facing Mr. Prodi's government is that it has to deal in parliament with an opposition movement that is basically its equal in strength. And the ruling coalition can do nothing to get off that powder keg.
The coalition government suffers from a particularly shaky majority in the Senate, where the center-left won the elections with the minimum margin of 0.06%. The current breakdown is 158 senators in Mr. Prodi's camp versus 156 in the center-right opposition headed by Mr. Berlusconi, Mr. Prodi's predecessor as prime minister. Though the Senate has seven senators-for-life, the majority of whom traditionally support the center-left bloc, they have been feeling fickle lately. In the current fragile situation, as Paolo Mieli, the editor of Corriere della Sera, puts it, "the illness of one senator or the capriciousness of another is enough to cause a catastrophe."
Elena Pushkarskaya (Rome)
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 26, 2007
|
|
|
